Abstract Time delay existed in the communication channels leads to the appearance of some most challenging problems, such as decrease of stability and tracking performance, for dual-master-dual-slave (DMDS) teleoperation system. Based on the DMDS architecture, wave-variable-based method is proposed to handle those problems with the advantage of delay-independent passivity. To guarantee system stability and enhance the trajectory and force tracking performance, an asymmetric wave variable compensation method is presented, which compensates the backward wave variable by forward wave variable. Simulation and experiment results show the effectiveness of the proposed method in reducing tracking error and ensuring system stability.